Asian Bodybuilding

My brother, Jas, has always made me feel small. Not in terms of esteem: we love each other. Like brothers, you could say. But physically speaking. Initially, this was simply down to his being three and a half years older: 37 years now, to my 33. Then it was because he turned out significantly taller: 6ft 1in to my 5ft 10in. But in recent years, when I was hoping incipient decrepitude would level things out, the feeling of physical intimidation has intensified.

As is often the case with one’s own family, it took time to wake up to the obvious. If I ever dwelt on the inferiority complex, I probably put it down to losing weight: I’ve taking up running, an activity that, if you do it long enough, leaves you with the physique of a teenage girl. But the penny finally dropped during a weekend visit to my family in the West Midlands, when I couldn’t help noticing that every time I saw Jas, he was either preparing, cooking or eating a chicken dish of some kind.

“What are you doing?” He was grilling a chicken breast at 8.45am.

“Protein.”

“Protein?”

He answered a different question. “I had some Fruit ’n Fibre for breakfast.” He took a sip from a plastic cup, which I’d realise later contained a protein shake. “But you need protein if you’re going to bulk up. You also need to make sure you never have a calorie deficit. And it’s a good idea to split your food intake into meals of roughly equal nutritional content and eat at regular intervals.” A glance at my thin arms. “You know what?”

“What?”

“Have you thought about doing weights?”

My brother, it transpired, had taken up bodybuilding…

Read atTimes Online